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An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip late Thursday killed a prominent militant who was the security chief of the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Interior Minister Said Siyam, a Hamas leader, called the killing an assault on the government and said that militant groups vowing revenge had a right to respond. The strike killed Jamal Abu Samhadana, 43, leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a group responsible for many recent rocket attacks on southern Israel and suspected in the 2003 bombing of an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip in which three security officers were killed.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday issued a decree overturning the Hamas government's creation of a police force made up mainly of Palestinian militants. The development deepened the ongoing confrontation between Abbas, considered a moderate, and Hamas, the Islamist group that took power last month after winning parliamentary elections in January. Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam, a member of Hamas, announced the creation of the new security force Thursday, saying it would be composed primarily of "resistance fighters" and headed by Jamal Abu Samhadana, a wanted militant who is accused of masterminding many attacks on Israelis.

Israeli and Palestinian ministers sat down together for meetings here Monday, as the two sides worked to fill in details of a new peace plan. But on Monday night, an explosion tore apart an Israeli home near the West Bank, and police were investigating it as a possible suicide bombing. Investigators found two bodies in the rubble, one of a woman and the other of a young man, police said Tuesday. "They're not saying it's a terrorist attack," said Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman.

Israel allowed a modest increase in the supply of basic goods to the Gaza Strip on Sunday as part of an agreement on a cease-fire with the militant group Hamas that has held since going into effect Thursday. A total of 78 trucks carrying dairy and meat products, fruit, vegetables and other basic goods unloaded supplies at the Sufa border crossing, up from an average of 60 trucks a day before the truce, said Peter Lerner, spokesman for the department of the Israeli Defense Ministry that deals with the Palestinian areas.

Palestinian militants destroyed an Israeli tank for the first time Thursday night, planting a mine that punched through the tank's belly, killing at least three soldiers and slightly wounding a fourth. The tank was ripped apart as it responded to what the Israeli army described as a coordinated attack on a settler convoy after it entered the Gaza Strip, headed for the isolated Jewish settlement of Netzarim. A bomb blew up beside the settlers' bus, which was bulletproof, and gunmen opened fire on the convoy.

An early-morning rocket attack from the Gaza Strip that wounded about 40 Israeli soldiers at an army base triggered calls in Israel for a strong military response Tuesday, but officials said a large-scale offensive is unlikely. The injury toll was the highest in Israel from a single Palestinian rocket attack. The militant groups Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the strike that hit a training base at Zikim, just north of the Gaza-Israel border.

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian militant and wounded nine other people in an airborne missile strike in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, stepping up their response to a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis. The air strike in the town of Rafah near the Egyptian border targeted Mahmoud Arkan, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group made up of dissident members of the mainstream Fatah group and other Palestinian factions. The Israeli army said Arkan had been responsible for a series of attacks on Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, including the firing of anti-tank missiles that killed a soldier in June.

Israel expressed anger and dismay Thursday over the naming of a wanted militant in the Gaza Strip to a senior security post in the new Hamas-dominated Palestinian government. At the same time, Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam, a member of Hamas, announced the formation of a special branch of the security forces that he said was to be made up mainly of members of militant groups who had participated in attacks against Israel. The Hamas-led government, which came to power three weeks ago, has been locked in a deepening confrontation with Israel.

Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli army patrol near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Sunday, killing three soldiers and wounding a fourth, the army said. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of the mainstream Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a "response to Zionist massacres against our people" and retaliation for Israeli raids in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah in which 14 Palestinians have been killed in recent days. Hiding behind a wall after dark, the gunmen fired from close range at a foot patrol in the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud north of Ramallah, a military official said.